Grant Green

Nigeria is a quartet session that Grant Green recorded for Blue Note in January 1962. It stayed in the vault until 1980, when it came out in the label's LT series of previously unissued material. It is straight hard bop and standards, played by Green with a rhythm section of the highest calibre, and one of the less recognised records of his Blue Note years. His previous session, Gooden's Corner, had the same fate.

The date took place on 13 January 1962 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, produced by Alfred Lion and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. Sonny Clark on piano and Sam Jones on bass had already played on Gooden's Corner. Here they are joined by Art Blakey on drums, in one of his rare appearances with the guitarist.

The record opens with Airegin, the Sonny Rollins tune, taken at a driving tempo with Green's clean single-note lines on top. It Ain't Necessarily So, the Gershwin song, is stretched to over ten minutes, with Blakey stoking the band and shouting encouragement behind the soloists. The second side is given to three more standards: Cole Porter's I Concentrate on You, The Things We Did Last Summer and Kern and Hammerstein's The Song Is You. Here Clark's piano is as much a voice as the leader's guitar.

On AllMusic, Michael Erlewine summed it up as "Just classic Green" and gave it four and a half stars. The same tracks were later gathered, with Green's other quartet dates with Clark, on The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark in 1997.

This stereo Tone Poet edition was supervised by Joe Harley and mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analogue master tapes. It is pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe gatefold jacket, with liner notes by Ben Sidran.